You will find many who say that its never good to limit your financial services lead generation strategy to only those that give your business easy sales. Opting for the easy way out has never been the most honorable option no matter what the era. On the other hand, there is a difference between planning a tactical retreat in your lead generation strategy and one that is simply cowardly.

Targeting your financial sales leads is not just a matter of who or what. It can also be a matter of when. For instance, there are certain days that prospects save up for. You do not have to be in any financial-related industry just to see what those savings are for and how they can translate into a strong probability of quality sales leads.

People who go against social norms both willingly and unwillingly are those who we label as deviants. Social norms are what we believe is acceptable behavior in a given context. Okay, now you may be asking yourself just what could you possibly learn from societal deviants when it comes to financial services lead generation?

No doubt that the recent Supreme Court decision on the controversial health care reform is sparking a lot of buzz within the insurance community. A particular topic of heated debate is how it now mandates businesses to provide insurance for all it’s employees. This quote from CNNMoney adds a few more details:

“The ruling also means that companies with 50 or more full-time employees must start providing health insurance for all workers by 2014 or face stiff penalties.”

At first glance, it would at least give you a more detailed picture of what kind of businesses to target if you’re a company that provides B2B insurance. In other words, this could mean an easier time generating B2B leads. Be careful though, not all businesses are thrilled with these recent turn of events.

Regardless, they have to comply. The problem with that sort of attitude is that it could lead to careless decision making. You see, whether it’s an entire business organization or just an individual, rushing somebody never ends well. Once you have the government itself doing that rushing, it can only get worse.

Forcing companies to start sifting through providers might only mean that they’ll just pick the first one they see and be done with it. They won’t try and learn all the details (which is a seriously dangerous thing to do, given the complexity of insurance).

No matter what, it is critical to let your prospect companies know what it is that they’ll be spending their money on. You never know if some of the details might or might not be within the best interests in their business. Before you object, that’s better than having them sign a deal with you only to have the complaints coming in because they didn’t know whether you could cover this or that.

Business leads aren’t just about giving you information about a prospect and what it can tell you to help you get your sale. It’s about sharing information with the prospect as well. That includes information about how your business works, what kind of insurance you provide, what your coverage is, your conditions etc, etc.

Furthermore, maybe the reason why these businesses aren’t so eager to meet with you is because you’re not being accommodating enough. Maybe there are things that you can do to help better your control over the information you provide without necessarily overwhelming your prospect. Simply put, don’t opt for the easy way out. You’ll be no different from the companies who don’t learn well enough about their insurance providers because they just didn’t want the government breathing down on their necks.

To summarize, you shouldn’t always count on government mandates to get prospects moving in your direction. It might do more harm than good. For all you know, it might even direct them to your competitors first before you! Again, it leads to reckless decision making and a short-sighted ‘let’s get this over with’ attitude. It’s bad enough that these people are being forced so you should be as accommodating and not look like you’re just jumping at these ‘opportunities’ pointed your way courtesy of the federal government.

If there’s one thing you can learn from insurance fraud, it’s to never underestimate the possibility of deceit. And as always, the best way to counteract deceit is by being sharp in finding out the truth. So what does this have to do with lead generation (or a call center)?

As you’re well aware, a lead generator is supposed to tell you everything you need to know about a prospect in order to make a sale. You don’t just learn about an opportunity. You learn things that will help you achieve success with this opportunity. Things like the needs, the size, and the budget of a prospect company are just some of the interesting facts you can use so you’ll know (and show) how to be of best service to them.

The problem comes when businesses have become too lazy and would rather speed up the process in certain areas. One of these areas is the form of communication being used to connect with prospects. You see it when they automate their marketing messages and become purely dependent on attracting inquiries with as little outbound effort as possible.

Another example would be when they rely too much on online conversations to learn about prospects. They start conversations by going to social media sites or sending emails with interesting subject lines. Granted, these forms of communication aren’t without their perks. Emails don’t disrupt decision makers when they’re in the middle of important management tasks. Social media has the power to grant both exposure as well as insight into how the whole of the target market is behaving.

However, remember the issue of trust? This is where you need to question the reliability of these methods. You’ve probably read and watched many an advisory telling people to be careful about what they read online. It’s even more critical when it comes to having online conversations with someone. These warnings aren’t just limited to children or to keeping people safe from sex predators. It applies to businesses and professionals too. You shouldn’t be too trusting of the messages you receive from a prospect or the things you read up on their social media profile. In fact, even the networking sites themselves encourage their users to use real pictures and other means to show that they’re real people. That says a lot about how easy it is to put up false and misleading information on the Web.

This is why it’s very important to really verify the information you’ve gathered from online sources by using more real, more direct forms of communication. A phone conversation is one such form. It’s not that complicated. You’re hearing a real person’s voice. They’re confirming the things they’ve said in their messages, the addresses on their profiles, and what their company does. If that’s not enough (and sometimes it really isn’t), you can even set insurance appointments so that you’ll be meeting these people in the flesh.

Costs aren’t an excuse to not go to these necessary lengths. (Professional telemarketers can just be outsourced anyways so you don’t have to worry about hiring them all by yourself.) If you want to protect yourself from fraudulent information, then you must do everything to verify the truth.